


Summer School

by ambyr



Category: My Teacher Is an Alien - Bruce Coville
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:10:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/pseuds/ambyr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a summer on the <i>New Jersey</i> teaching aliens how to be human, Susan is ready to go home. But Duncan is less convinced.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer School

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Macadamanaity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macadamanaity/gifts).



> Thanks due to Kaesa and [redacted] for the beta.

*Thwack* went my spitball against the back of Duncan Dougal’s head. He slapped a hand over it, stopping its slide down his neck, and spun around even as I hastily tucked a second missile back in my pocket.

“Who threw that?” He did a good job pretending to twist his head back and forth searching for a target for his anger, even though I was the only other human in the “classroom.”

At the front of the room, Fleef wrung her orange fingers, agitated. Conflict—even raised voices—made her nervous. It made a lot of aliens nervous, coming from humans. That was why Duncan and I were here, on a spaceship called the _New Jersey_ , and not back in Kennituck Falls.

See, humans make aliens nervous. We’re smart—maybe one of the smartest species around. We can write symphonies, build spaceships, cure diseases. What we can’t do is figure out how to stop killing each other. 

Last month, Duncan, Peter, and I helped discover why humans are so violent. We convinced the aliens to give us a chance, as a species, to improve. To teach us how to be good galactic citizens.

It wouldn’t be the first time aliens served as teachers on Earth. A year ago, I discovered that my sixth-grade teacher wasn’t just weird; he was out of this world. Literally. And that’s a problem: no matter how well they disguise themselves, aliens on Earth stick out like a sore thumb.

So when the Interplanetary Council agreed to send Earth teachers, it was on the condition that Duncan and I teach those teachers. That we show them what to expect, and how to blend in.

Part of me was having the time of my life. When I was younger, I wanted to be an actress. This was a better test of my skills than winning the starring role in the school play. I had to play the roles of all the kids in my school—not just me, teacher’s pet Susan Simmons, but everyone from meek Mike Foran to bullying Orville Plumber. It was important for Fleef—and all the other teacher candidates—to see the range of behavior they could expect.

Also, after a lifetime of being a goody two-shoes, it was fun.

“It was _you_!” Duncan finally decided, and leapt out of his chair toward me.

“Tea-cher, he’s scare-ing meee,” I said in my best sing-song voice, scrambling around to put my desk between me and Duncan.

“I’ll give you ‘scared,’” Duncan snarled, and raised a hand to mime a punch.

Fleef burst into tears.

* * *

_I don’t think she’s going to make the cut_ , Duncan thought at me later, after we had spent twenty minutes calming Fleef down and assuring her that Duncan and I would never actually hurt each other.

 _I don’t know_ , I thought back. _I’ve had human teachers freak out more. Don’t you remember Mr. Fields?_

Mr. Fields had been my second grade art teacher. He had fainted when Eddie Ziegler had cut his hand with a pair of scissors and gone up to Mr. Fields shouting, “I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding!” If Eddie really had been bleeding to death, it wouldn’t have been funny. But what made Mr. Fields faint wasn’t blood—it was red paint.

 _No_ , Duncan thought. He picked up his pace along the ship corridor, and I had to scurry to keep up.

I remembered, a little too late, that Duncan hadn’t been in my second grade art class. Duncan was older than me. He was only in my class now because he had been held back. That was before he had used Kreeblim’s machine to fry his brains and make himself super-smart. Sometimes it was hard to remember the old Duncan Dougal.

_Well, never mind._ I didn't want to pick at old wounds. _She really does care about the project. I’m sure she’ll make a great teacher with just a little more practice._

_“Just a little”?_ Duncan thought back. _They may need to keep us here for years._

I shuddered, but Duncan sounded strangely pleased at the thought. _I hope not! I want to go home!_

Just the idea made my mind conjure up images of school and my parent's house. I tried to share them, but Duncan brushed them aside.

_What for?_

_I_ like _school_ , I thought, somewhat defensively. I wasn’t sure even newly smart Duncan would understand that. _I like learning things._

 _You can learn plenty here_ , he pointed out.

And he was right. The library on the ship was amazing. The problem was, I was so busy teaching teachers I barely had time to visit it—and even when I did, I didn’t understand half of what it was telling me. No, a quarter. 

I’d always thought I was smart. I had plans to become a scientist, to design rocket ships. Now I _lived_ on a rocket ship, and every day I used technology like transcendental elevators that I didn’t understand the first thing about. It was like I’d skipped grades straight to college. I wanted to go back and learn everything properly, in order.

But when I tried to explain this to Duncan, all I got in return was a detailed explanation of just how the transcendental elevator standing in front of us worked. 

I guess if I’d fried my brains, I wouldn’t be feeling so lost.

* * *

I don’t want to make it sound like the _New Jersey_ was all work and incomprehensible technology. There were good parts, too. Amazing parts, even. Like my duets with the captain.

One of the first things I’d done with my URAT was order a new piccolo, since mine had been left behind on Earth. I’d been a little afraid that it wouldn’t know what a piccolo was, since Broxholm, the first alien I had met, hated music. But it turned out that was just Broxholm’s species. Lots of other aliens thought it was a charming human habit. And some of them loved it.

The first time I practiced with my new piccolo, my URAT chimed with an incoming message. It was an invitation from the captain of the _New Jersey_ to visit him in his quarters. I was nervous. We’d only just convinced the Interplanetary Council to spare the Earth, and at the time I remember wondering if they’d changed their mind. _Something_ had to have happened. Why else would the captain want to talk to little old me?

My first surprise, when I reached the captain’s quarters, was that the captain looked nothing like I’d expected him to. I’d met a fair number of aliens already at that point, and I knew some of them looked strange—really strange. But all the ones I’d met so far still walked—or crawled, or hopped—and they all had something that I could think of as a face—even though, in a couple cases, I’d learned that what I thought was their face was something else entirely.

The captain didn’t. He was a collection of crystals inside a giant tank, which I guess explained why _I_ had been asked to go to _him_.

My second surprise was to learn that he could hear _everything_ on the ship through vibrations in its walls. Most of it he tuned out—kind of like me tuning out all the shouted conversations in the school lunch room. But the piccolo playing had stood out to him. It sounded, I guess, like his people: all high-pitched, chirping notes.

Until that meeting, I had never thought of any of the aliens as _homesick_ , not the way I sometimes was. We were in outer space, and outer space was their home, right? Except of course, when you thought about it for a minute, it wasn’t. Each of them came from their own home worlds, and some of those were very, very far away.

The captain told me a lot about his home world that visit, in between asking me to play. Now whenever he has a little time free, he asks me to come back again. Sometimes he sings to accompany me, and sometimes I just play. It’s nice having such an appreciative audience, even if it’s a little weird not hearing any applause when I’m done. I guess it makes _both_ of us less homesick.

The day Fleef broke into tears, I went straight to the captain’s quarters after Duncan and I had finished calming her down. He hadn’t invited me, and so I had to wait for him to finish what my language implant told me was a complicated argument about routing trade deliveries. But he seemed delighted to see me—or as delighted as a collection of crystals could be.

It wasn’t until after we had finished our duet—a sort of variant on the Sousa solo I had learned in sixth grade, although Mr. Bamwick would never have recognized it—that the captain asked me, in his gentle, chiming way, why I’d come.

I shuffled my feet and buffed the mouthpiece of my piccolo, taking my time. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful. I didn’t want to sound like I wasn’t willing to do whatever was necessary for keeping the human race safe. 

“Is the Interplanetary Council ever going to let us go home?” I blushed. I hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. “I mean, your ship is very lovely. And I know I’m doing important work. Work that might take years. But—”

His tinkling sigh cut me off. “Solutes need their nuclei,” he said, or rather my implant said. 

It took me a moment to work out that he meant, roughly, that I needed my family. He was right. My parents were given a URAT when I decided to stay on the ship, so we can talk to each other sometimes, but it’s not the same. I could only hear about the toothpick model of the _New Jersey_ that my dad was building, not touch it. I couldn’t touch _them_. And I missed them terribly. Heck, I even missed broccoli.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “I hate saying it, though. What if the Interplanetary Council changes their minds?”

“They won’t change their minds, Susan,” he said. I think he was trying to sound reassuring, but that’s a hard trick for a crystal to pull off. “Not because of anything you do. In fact, you and your friend will be returning home at the end of the summer, along with our first class of teachers. We need you on Earth—you and other sympathetic humans—so those teachers will have someone to turn to if they find themselves exposed.”

My first reaction was joy. My second was terror. What could _I_ do if an alien was exposed? But when I expressed my doubt, the captain only tinkled, amused.

“You’re a resourceful young woman, Susan. You can do more than you think.”

* * *

I couldn’t wait to pass the news to Duncan once I was done talking with the Captain, but I didn’t know where he was. That shouldn’t have mattered. Our minds were linked. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hear his thoughts.

 _Peter_ , I thought, _can you hear Duncan?_

Peter was on Earth, of course, but for me he was only a thought away—like Duncan should have been. Sometimes he was sleeping, and I could only feel his dreams fuzzily at the back of his head. But right now he was awake. He responded instantly.

_No. Is something wrong?_

_I don’t know. I’ll try to find him. I have to give him the news: we’re coming home at the end of the summer._

The response was more emotion that words: happiness at the thought of seeing me again, faint concern about what this meant for the teacher program, regret on my behalf that I would be leaving space.

 _I’m happy, too_ , I thought back. _Don’t worry. The program is fine. And space was your dream more than mine. It’s amazing up here, but I’ll be glad to be home. You’d better have all the school gossip for me, so I know what’s what when we start eighth grade. I don’t want people to think_ I’ve _been replaced by an alien!_

 _I don’t know any of that, and no one thinks I’m an alien!_ Peter protested. 

_Are you sure?_ I teased. 

Then I went looking for Duncan.

* * *

I tried the library first, because he always talked about how amazing the machines there were. Then I went back to the practice classroom, thinking maybe he had forgotten something. But the problem wasn’t really where he was. It was why I had to go looking for him at all.

I think I would have been more concerned—worried that he’d hurt himself, or gotten trapped in some sort of force field—if I hadn’t known, in the back of my mind, what had to have happened.

See, like I said, back in seventh grade Duncan had used a machine owned by one of our alien teachers to make himself super smart. He went from failing math to dreaming up new theorems in his sleep, from hating to read to going through a book every hour. The only problem was, the change wasn’t permanent. When he found that out, he wasn’t very happy. In fact, he was furious. But we had other things to worry about at the time, like convincing the aliens that the Earth was worth saving. He’d set aside his anger so he could focus with the rest of the team on the problem at hand.

But now? Now, the aliens had been won over. Humanity was going to be all right. And Duncan’s brain, as his little explanation of the transcendental elevator had showed, wasn’t deteriorating at all.

One explanation was that Kreeblim and Broxholm had been wrong. They didn’t know humans as well as they thought they did, after all. Maybe the change _would_ be permanent on us, even if it wasn’t on other species.

But I thought the more likely explanation was that Duncan wasn’t willing to give up his new brain and had found a way to keep it. Which was why, when he came out the stock room near the practice classroom where they kept all the Earth detritus that Broxholm and Kreeblim had brought back to use as props, I was waiting in the hall outside with my arms crossed over my chest.

I knew the minute he was done frying his brain, because his thoughts were suddenly there again, floating beyond mine but easily accessible. I wasn’t sure how Peter and I had missed his absences before. It was obvious and jarring, now that I was paying attention, when his brain surfaced from the machine. But just because we were all linked didn’t mean we were constantly in each other’s heads. We tried to give each other some privacy. Maybe we had been trying a little too hard.

“We need to talk,” I told Duncan.

He jumped. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see me—he should have been able to feel me from the other side of the wall—but I guess it took his brain a while to assimilate all its new capacities. He was off-balance.

“Susan! What are you doing here?”

 _I know you’ve been using Kreeblim’s machine_ , I thought at him, now that I had his attention.

Even if he had been able to lie in his thoughts, the guilty look he shot back toward the closet would have given him away.

 _What if I have?_ he demanded. 

_You can’t keep refrying your brain forever_ , I told him.

_Why not?_

_For starters, because we’re going back to Earth at the end of the summer, and the machine isn't yours. You can't fold it up in your suitcase. You're going to have to leave it here._

His response was panicked. _I’m not going._

 _Because of the machine?_ I asked. _Duncan, there’s nothing wrong with being you._

I could feel Peter listening in at the back of my head from the moment I found Duncan, but now, for the first time, he spoke up.

 _She’s right. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there was_ lots _wrong with you_. Duncan had picked on Peter more than he’d picked on me, back in the bad old days of elementary school. Peter had forgiven him, but that didn’t mean he had forgotten. _But it wasn’t frying your brains that fixed that. It was learning not to hurt other people._

 _Easy for you to say_ , Duncan thought. _You’ve always been the brain. Susan’s smart, too. And she’s always cared about people. She used to try to protect you from me. Without Kreeblim’s machine, what have I got to add? How am I supposed to help you save Earth? And how do you know I won’t go back to just the way I was before, once my brain is no longer fried?_

He felt terrified. For a moment, I didn’t try to put anything into words, and neither did Peter. I just filled my mind with how much I trusted Duncan, how much I cared about him. How I knew we never would have made it this far without him.

 _The machine won't help you save humanity_ , Peter said at last. _To do that, we have to learn how to connect to each other again. The machine only blocks you off more._ He tried to share the feeling of looking for Duncan and finding nothing where there should have been a link, the eerie emptiness we had both sensed when Duncan was hooked to the machine. _And remember what Hoo-Lan taught you. You said he showed you how to focus and clear your thoughts. Even when the machine wears off, your brain won’t be like it was before. You’ll know how to use it more effectively._

My own response was slower. I had a lot of things sloshing around in my head, and I wanted to make sure I put them together right. _You sound like the aliens who thought humanity could never change. They were convinced that we could never be taught not to kill each other. But they’re wrong, Duncan. And part of how we know they’re wrong is you. You did change. It wasn’t just the machine. Remember back in sixth grade? When you found out we were trying to stop Broxholm, you wanted to do whatever you could to help. Because even though you were a bully, you knew it was the right thing to do. That’s what you add, Duncan. You remind us people can become better, that they want to become better, even when humanity looks hopeless._

 _So I’m, what, your mascot?_ He sounded sarcastic, but underneath there was hope.

 _Maybe_. I grinned at him. _But you’re more than that. Remember, what we’re doing in the classroom here is important. And when we get back to Earth, we’ll be doing important work, too. The captain said our job will be to help any aliens who blow their cover. You’re good at that kind of thing. You’re the one who thought up the ‘scholarship’ we told my parents about, remember?_

 _And that’s not because you fried your brains_ , Peter added. _That’s because you have years of practice making up stories and sneaking around, practice Susan and I don’t have. All those excuses you came up for cutting school? We need that sort of inventiveness, if we’re going to help humanity reach its full potential._

 _Starting_ , I thought, _with excuses for you._

_What?_

_It’s not just your mind you’re worried about._ It was obvious now that I was tangled in his thoughts, not trying to give him space. _You don’t want to go back to your family, do you?_

 _Would you?_ Duncan shot back.

I shook my head. I knew what Duncan’s family life had been like.

 _Maybe_ , Peter thought unexpectedly. _Families aren’t always as bad as you think they are. But there’s a middle ground between going back to live with them and cutting them off entirely. We’ll help you find it._

 _Maybe some sort of boarding school?_ I thought, catching Peter’s drift. 

_Great_ , Duncan thought. _More school_. But I could feel the wheels of his mind already turning.

 _Well, you’re the cover stories person_ , I reminded him. _You’ll think of something better. Just remember: “One is all, and all are one.”_ I could feel Peter and Duncan echoing the well-worn words in my mind. _So stop running off on your own, huh?_

For emphasis, I pulled the extra spitball out of my pocket and flicked it at his shoulder.

“Hey!” 

His shout was enough to bring Fleef’s stalk peeking around the corner, followed by the rest of her head.

“Susan? Duncan? What’s wrong? Why are you still here?” She sounded concerned, but there was none of the terror that she’d shown earlier that day when Duncan and I were pretending to fight. I guess our talk with her, about some level of conflict being normal and safe for humans, had finally stuck.

“Nothing at all,” I said. It didn’t take any acting ability. I was sure, as Duncan and I walked away without a backward glance at the closet holding the machine, that everything was going to work out—maybe even Fleef’s career.

 _Maybe_ , Duncan thought. _But I think I’d better start thinking up extra cover stories for her, just in case._


End file.
